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Landry, on the other hand, does not support the course Obama is charting in the Middle East. “I stand by Israel 100 percent,” he told me. “And Louisianans do too. They just don’t know where Charles is on this issue. I was speaking to a church group the other day and I said, ‘Who here supports Israel?’ Every single hand in that room went up. Christians stand by Israel.”

If Landry is right, perhaps highlighting his differences with Boustany on Israel will help him make inroads in Lafayette, where (as of 2005) 54 percent of the population is Catholic.

Landry may also benefit from a last-minute addition to the race. Just hours before the qualifying deadline, Democrat Ron Richard, a lawyer from Lake Charles, filed his papers. If Richard pulls enough votes from the more moderate Boustany, then Landry has a much better shot, at least at forcing a runoff.

For the most part, though, Landry’s and Boustany’s attacks are full of cartoonish exaggeration: “Boustany wants to take a scalpel to the debt, when what we need is a hatchet,” Landry told me.

“Landry thinks we need to tear the whole thing down,” Boustany said of entitlement reform. “What we really need is a scalpel. I want to do open heart surgery on the budget.”